these are the man whose company you uill keep but you have to choose. you must hoosand i hope you choose wisely. so i thank my esteemed panel once again for tir time. thank you so much for coming a taki time out of a beautiful summer evening to be here. these gentleman and i are going to go directly behind here to the athletic building where they will sign books to read the booksre availableor $25 apiececash, check or charge, so i am going to hit them over here and i hope some of you will join. thank you so much. [applause] .. the recipient

of science bk awardn science, philosophy and religion. >> host: is now been 41ears since that national book award. right? >> guest: that's right. >> host: 1968. >> guest: that's rht, yes. spic >> host: it was your first nonfiction book? >> guest: it was my first serious book, that's right. >> host: what was it like to win the national book

>> it was very intidating. i wasoung, around 28 or 30. but i will tellou, it was blessing in one way tt my mom and dad that i must say they both passed away at age 102, they were very nervous. i had gone to harvardnd by some amazing mistake i won a rhodes scholarship. they were really nervous and kind of scared when i give of my eighth rhodes because i found oxford after harvard and i went to parisnd i made friends with the older writers

there with richard wright and others mentored me. i came back to the united states and instead are returning to the university, to harvard, they expected i would become an english professor, instead it was swept up in the civil-rights movement and i went off to the black community of boston and i was moved into the community and became a fourth gde teacher. they were scared as any parent would be, i think. not that i was in a black community but they kept saying, my father especially, my mother was better, my father at first kept saying, you are squandering your education prior rhodes scholar tching fourthrade in e inner

city. been a w when i wrote death that the early age which was out the rst year as a teacher, said the it redms to me and my daddy size and en when it was published he s not sure whether he would forgive me but beaause in a sense coming he hadine to harvard he was at the harvard mecal school so he felt i had turned against everything he had sod for and he was worried i would ruin my life so when death at an early age one the national book award that was the first time daddy felt i would survive and i was okay. >> before debt that an early age you had a novel. >> that ishen i was an

undergrad. >> host: i have a copy of it. it is hard to find. the feel of poppies. >> guest: what is that term? a piece of juvenilia. is a horrible stupak little ok eroded in my senior year at harvard with a wonderful english professor. i know if you like poetry but. >> and undersecretary of state but have lived much of his life in paris and he adopted me as an unded at harvard

so i had him for two yea but in my senior ar cing he took me aside and said, jonathan, this was in november, you know, you wil not get a letter a becauseou have not produced mh this year. so during christmas vacation i spent exactly 12 days and i wrote this upsurge little romantic novel and i got my letter day and i thoug that was the end of it. but by accident it actually got published and i immediately put it out of print. >> host: you put it out o brent? and author can do that? >> guest: survive for about one year tn i convinced my publisher said it was a silly book.

nobody has the right to publish a book they wrote over 12 days on christmas vacation. >> host: so many of you books e about people let's kick off tosk you to talk about a few of the people in yourook. pineapple? who is pineapple? >> guest: pineapple is this wonderful little girl who my met in the south bronx. i was working in the south bronx for about 25 yea. i met her about 15 years ago in the m or early 1990's when she was a in kindergarten. she isust adorable. very smart very bossy. i remember even in

kindergarten wn ias trying to help her with the ithmetic bec teachers always p me to work, they always say ce and visit my class and when i get there they say don't just and there, do something. you are suppod to be a teacher. she looks at mend says come you are standing o the wrong side of me. she wanted me to lean over her left elbow someone move and th pattern continued when she was in fourth grade she thought so bossy with me that she got wried about my social life and started to try to fix m up with her teacher. fifth grade she looked at the suit that i am wearing. it is the same suit i used to wear everyime i visited her and she did not like the fact it was always the same suit to. d black.

she saito me, she fingered it with herand like your grandmother might do if you're wearing something that was shabby. she said jonathan come it is that your own the suit? i said, and no. i have to but they're both the same. sheooked very concerned. remember sitting face to face and chief told her arms like the school counselor and says, jonathan, to be a favor. just like my mom sunday when you are in a niceart of town, go to a good store and get yourself a good w suit. she is so commanding that i obeyed and i went to brooks brothers and i bought a new suit just to please herut to

her disma it was theame black suit. we had another counseling session as she hol her arms again an i will never forget th because she was mature as a fifth grader and said jonathan, i know you get depressedometimes to seehe way we have to live. but you do not always need to dress in black. i love her for telling me thap. here she was a little girl part of the sou bronx. my last five books have taken place there. about book was amazingrace. that is the poorest urban neighborhood in the united states here she is living in dire poverty with a grim

building awful, the elevator never worked, they had to walk up eight flights. so much desolation around her and she was worried about me. >> host: is that occur o the cover? >> guest: she is not on ct. >> host: this is pineapple? >> guest: she is bossing me. >> host: how old was s then? >> guest: six or seven and she got worse as she got older. >>ost: what about now? >> guest: a wonderful success story. i am so proud of her. her real name is jack the. pineapple is a nickname. she was rescued from the n york city public schools at leasfrom the very bad school in the south bronx by a very

kind person who have read my book. and we brought her up to new england and she went to a good school and last june the principal called me up and ask me if iould give t coencement address so i could hear of her, her high school diploma which i did with joy in she is now a freshman in a very good college and studying to be a social worker so shean go back to theronx to help other children. >> host: who is francesca? >> guest: that is a made up made for a wonderful first-year teacher. first year, first grade teacher. very unusual. that she had majored, she went to colge and majored in

literature and anthropology, history, very oadly educated but she also got certified as a teacher. she had good vacation courses. i met her when she asked me, she called me up once us teachers do, she said william visit my class some time? beuse she was in her first grade class. i said would love to. and teachers always do this to me. s soon as walked in she says, don't just stand there, help one of the children. i start helping one of the

kids. i de a mistake i was not following the lesson plan. she scolded me. i love teachers like this. not only beautifully trained, but had a jubilant lavalife and nice sense of humor. when made a mistake, she says to the class, mr. jonathan did not pay attention to the instructions. he is not behaving like a big run-up first period -- first grader what should we do to him? and the children voted that i needed a timeout those little double so they made me go sit in there reading corner but she was, there are thousands

like her, ms. shea is beautifu prepared, wonderfully educated, a sparkling, idealistic young teacher who flood into the urban schools right now and very eager to teach. a lot of them like francesca are steeped in civil rights tradition so she had been to be white jewish background but whatever the background, what ever, they are very much on the side of the children and identify with the kids. she would flood the cssroom with the classics come a wonderful books like my favorites, like a hungry caterpillar, i do remember the but? >> host: i don't. i read that you like that. >> guest: he also wrote good night moon. do you remember that?

>>he also read them poetry. >> host: your letters were this book? >> guest: in letters to e young teacher. in theackground there i always beautiful music playing sometimes there was african american, metimes it was a fr. -- from. she had a joyful personality kids would lineup waiting for their hug and the thing is we're getting thousands of young people like her coming into the urban sools but the trouble is we are losing aot of and they quit within three years and when i asked them why because i get hundreds o phone calls or e-mails every month from teachers like this

who might have encougeto go into ese classrooms ba global of why are you quitting? they never blamed t children they always say it is because of this obsessive crazy testing mania that has been forced down our throats by the federal government. mrs.ot of no child left behind. it is the worst single piece of education legislation i have seen in my lifetime. teachers hate it bause it stipulates every single moment of thechool day so if somedy like francesca wants to come then and read to children comment day marvelous home the night before, or get off track a le bit and let one of thehildren tell her wonderfql story, not do

that. you are wasting time. that will not help to pump t test scores. unfounately, she stuck it out eight years but a lot of them are quitting within three years. that is a terrible loss to the children because when they do quite come if they stay come if they continue, and you know, where they end up? in the suburban schos where they know they will not lose thei souls. >> host: you lost an early job for cry bring that up now because you're talking about francesca talking about something she enjoyed can sheet do that now when you were not alled to bring langston hughes into the clsroom? >> guest: it is even worse now. the standards come in the

effort to pump the test scores which is the oy goal of the child left behind, almost everything that will be on the testatz exiled from curriculum. people would say to me a lding up francesca is a modeis very dangerous becae you can do that in the suburbs. that is fine but we've playfulness and when and joy and woody guthrie and great black folk music these black kids in the city cannot afford that. we need to drill them along a military regiment to pump those test scores to satisfy the government.

in a w it is worse now than it was then. but it is parallel. in boston, there were standards. there was accountability. i was not a rabble at all. are was nonpolitical in the least. i was stern by the deaths of young civil-rights woriers in the south. that is why i became a teacher. but basically i just wanted to teach children. but my fourth grade class,his was a typical all black class, all black school jtst as we have today, ther was no black matial in the curriculum of any substance except for aew tokens.

ever by a got a george washington carver because the kids called him the peanut man. he did not do anything controversial there is no ory or anything about black kids. so one day comen an impulse, cahal when i was in harvard squa i would go into our local communist bookstore that is the harvard coop that joe mccarthyoulday crimson. that is a good name for dhem because they are read. i picke up a book by langston hughes probably because the kids h never seen new book. erythi isold and raggedy. i brought it and. ev before it openedhe book, i held it up banned by

the way 35 kids were in my class in a nightmare building very much like today. a string of subs before was appointed was the 12th teacher that year. and they were rather hostile toe and first because why should they trust me after they had bn abandoned 10 are 12 times are ready? suddenly everybody is o the edge of their chair are remember of girl whispered said look, that man is colored because there is a pibture on the front. then i opened it and read a couple of pls to them and one grow in the back row who had beenhe most hostile and distant in a beautiful face

chiseled austere, a beautiful young woman smiled but cold and looked at me with that look in her high as. -- and her eyes. she got up and came out and touched my eht shoulder very gently and she whispered comment thankou. because they had never heard a pulled from a black ma and said 1098 take that book, and show it mind mom? i was so happy it would have given her my c she had memorize what of the pm that ha a dream what happens to a dream? does it dried up like a raisin in the sun cracks the next day

i was fired for reading data and other poem from langston hughes they have a list just like today that said langston hughes was th eighth great poet and i read him in fourth grade. sohe formal charge against me if i recall it was on the front page of "t new york times" because peoe were astonished, the charge was curriculum deviati "the boston globe" our local paper of course, played with this and there have line with something likehodes scholar fired from fourth grade. it did not hurt me. i was dired for curriculum deviation a couple months later the federal government

hired me for curriculum development. why people can take tse risks i had my harvard degree that was like my american express gold card. does that make sense? but it did politicize me than i did become politically ary the parents of my kids were very loyal a lot of white teachers say to me if i stick almanac co and you think the blackarents will support me? i said of cours the wil support you if they tnk you are on their side. if they thi you are fighting for their child, like all other parents. so the shut down the school the next day. th they shut down the whole school system and organized it

mushroomed and the black leaders from the city and said good lord, if the greatest black american poet is foidden in the fourth grade, along with e fact that weave a totally segregated system that is viciously on the call, we go to fight. they organized a massive protest on beacon hill if you don't know, that isike capitol hill. its the center of government. i hado come out and march with them. i was very nervous a frightened because i was shai brett vre was a very shy person i used to tremble in

public and i still do somemes. they made me get up and speak. i still remember the head of the naacp said to me, a thin, you he to find the nerve too it. i likeo watch history. i like watching history narrated every evening 30 minutes by walter cronkite i did not want to enter a history. i was afraid of that but i have no choice. that transformed my whole life. >> host: brain that to today, i do support teachers taking that kind of action today? if they did do you g out and defend them? >> guest: absolutely. i support teachers to take a

stand on the principal and teachers who are not afraid to speak their voices courageouslyc a real atrocity is thatappening? >> of course. it is not as obvious as the story i just tol bause nobo today would dare to ban langston hughes from the public schools. i might say by the way i got my reward not in heaven but on earth w@en langston hughes called me up if i was so happy and felt honored. but the teachers today, the thousands that contact me at least, are mosy overwlmed i do not want to sound

obsessive but the merciless sure being placed on them to do nothing except prepare e kids for exams. i am talking particularl elementa school. and teachers d not want to teach third grade because third grade ishe year in which the but year to a count the most under no child left behind, third grade is the year if the childails the test, the school systems are encouraged to hold the child back and do not omote the child. teachersr of rage by the anxiety this is creating for children, let me explain no good teacher at i know are opposed to testing if you are

teing something viablend useful but this is just subject matter and if you include things that do not showp in numbers whether a child rights with charm are rights with humor or whether a child can write a story that makes you cry. these tests to measur anything like that. you don' get any credit under and sealed before writing a autiful story tt brings tears to someone dies. a story thatakes them smile get credit only for topic sentences. remember those? hanoverton 12 books and have never used a topic sentence in life but they teach these uses things that require them because the people that wri the standards are not very bright and they learned in school but standards the

standards they are enforcing under nclb they're not really it -- written by great poets or philosophers semi intellectuals, mediocre ites them. people university who could ever get tenure at a first-rate university. i hate to be nasty but i actually read through the standards i masochis. these teachers to pro very few of their kids in the early grades in the desperately poor inner-citychools get

preschool. there is a program called headstart. i remember when it began because i helped to start the first headstart in boston in 1965/66. and serves less than half of the elible children in america because it is funded so well. not enough money. >> host: all federal funding? >> guest: yes. unfortunately it is worse in the inner-city neighborhoods where the poverty rate is intense. typicallyf i go indohe inner city school, this is the only way to find out the truth about preschool by the way. i never rely with online statistics because the state's fudge the numbers. for example, if a child is in

day car for grant money they count th as prescho but if you want to know real preschool the only way to doing is to go into the elementary school and go into kindergarten and squeeze your bottom into the tiny terror and ask one of those tiny people what did you do last year or the year before? and if good teacher can always tell in a couple of days. they will take you by the arm and say if you mean the real stuff that you're harvard classmates would buy for their children the beautiful montessori schools, e real thing, at ast 25 children, maybe five or six

got the real thing for half of day for one year. meanwhile my affluent friends in new york corporation beverly hills or broom would because i do know rich peopl grew up in that world i live in two worlds. i know what they do with their children because they tell me. they're grandchildren. typically they gethree years starting at two 1/2 average, wonderful, a developmental preschool that is not drought and kill testing preparation. wonderful preparation where i ll it pre-literacy skills. you mayit on a reading road.

of parents remember that. you could sit on the continent blend and it cos up to your little bit behind by calin fanatic osmosis. they learn social skills. and the oth kids g almost nothing than a few years later there:third grade and they all have to take the same nclb exams and guesshich ones scorer proficient and are immediately slotted asifted and talented and set on the road that leads to honors in high school and advanced placement and on to the best colleges in guess which ones on the otherand, are fou to bdevelopmentally delayed? developmentally delayed which is a polite term for rarded.

and likely to be cut back from promotion. by the way every time you hold a child back from promotion,t doubles the chance she will never graduate from high school holding back twice reduces the chancet 90% that was in "the new york times". so itust me true. >> host: that may and invite our ewers to join us jonathan kozol is our guest 81 i think it is "the new york times". >>ost: we will take your phone calls and e-mails that also have a discussion with him on his years of writing.

>> host: you came into writing your box really through the civil-rights movement? >> guest: i did. >> host: i have a questn that i he never seen you wride about. but in misssippi when the three young people were murdered, after that you said once you went to a relious person and ask them why you should do. who was that and who was the person? >>uest: the reason why i chose a religious person, i am

not religious in the sense thatight orthodox jewish grandma uld like me to be. but she got something in to meet the spirituity. my mom did too. in different ways. and i have always been drawn to people w if not religiou spiritual people. and i guess that is one reason i did this. i got my little car in harvard square. i had come back from paris at that te. nablus just on the verge of

going back to grad school at harvd to appease my father's anxiets anbecae actually wod have loved to spend my life has an english professor at a place like harvard. and at that e our love to spend my whole life. it will not sound very cool to the youngeople, but i would love to a semi life -- spent my life teaching shakespearean sonnets and teaching came later than hamlet with young people and ges my favorite modern poets. mess soon as i reaabout those three young people being muered by the ku klux klan in mississippi, i thought, that could be me. they were my age.

i just got in my little volkagenug i went to the boston suburbs for our have lived there my whole life i have never been into a black community. at is how divided we re and still are. >> host:ou wer from a fairly privileged background? >> guest: my dad is a narrow psychologist and my mother a social worker. i grew up in a classic ivilege suburb where a lot of doctors and lawyers. >> host: you have a live-in maid >> gue: new to massacsetts is comparable to when it cut illinois or

saarsdale new york. the only bck person i ever knewas the made. and everybody out there had a made. it seemed like everybody did she was not black she was a colored girl. that is what people said. i used to hear my friends parents wou always say how much they love thr colored girl. maybe they did love the but theyere not equal. the colored girls came from boston and were so poorly educated come with they would not end up competing with the doors and lawyers come if they bame their maids. that has nothanged. it is exactly the same.

now the made is likely to be latina may be or haitian. i went to roxbury for the first time i read about the minister come at a black minister who was dr. king's representitive in boston, a sort of for a wonderful man man, m an episcopal priest. i went to jim and i said basically, can i me of any use? and he said something like, yes, you can be of use and i am glad you came here to your own hometown becausell other racial injustice and thisation is not just done in mississippi. i said what should i do? he said become a teacher.

we need teaers who will have some allegiance tour children. that is what hapned. i just walked into the boston schools and said okay i will be a teacher might not have any certification. they said where did you go to college? i hat to make fun of harvard because i loved it but where did you go to college? i said harvard. they said then you cannot be a teacher because you did not lear anything useful. i said there must bsome way and they said you to be a substitute. just like today they fled the inner-city schls with these alternate certification route basicallpeople who know nothing out teaching. just to get a warm body int thelassroom. they tested me and the first

week they had me teach kindergarten and i was terrified. to me, they're like gerbils me. let the crawl all over i pe the but they survive. so finally they promoted me and i became the permanent substitutes and they gave me the fourth grade and that is our all started. >> host: let's get to some one calls. we will start wid maryland. >>aller: hello? i am sorry i tune did abo 20 minutesfter jonathan kol had already begun but i am familiar with him. i had a chance to thank fully ar you give one of your

talks. by the way somebody gave you a copy of a book that i had done because i have written about what has been happening in public education since we initiated the brown decision. the book is called brown the topeka segregation. >> guest: yes. and remember when you gave that to me. >> caller: it could be the upsetting book but it came from a lot of experience is that i have had and was ncerd about. and i grew at -- group in north carolina, segregated schools, of course, i'do way back negative a enjoyed those experiences and enjoyed quite a lot an i taught in the

public schools in georgetown south carolina where at several others were as we have learned. these were all black schools teachers and the administrators and children or arning and they were good communities. but from there i went to baltimor and i talked in several situations there. i want to give one particular experience to illustrate but it boils down a lot of what we are so concerned about now and wondering what w could do about it lies in trying to see whether some of these underlying causes of these decisions of our children. i am not talking about because

they were in segregated schools becse we have plenty of people who have performed well. >> guest: good question. remember our conversation we haa pleasant disagreement, a mild disagreement. here is my own belief. obviously not everybody was destroyed by segregated education. there were survivors like this woman. but i do not give an evil system credit for its mistakes. these are rare exceptions. when i wro to the shame of a nation which was published a couple ofears ago this subtitle hs very clear. >> host: the restoration of

apartheid screwing in america. >> that our schools are as segregated in 1968 the year the kennedys were killed. ironically the people that grew up in that era, well who last chapter is a long conversation that i had with congressmen louis. john lewis is a marvelous man the congressmen frmm torture -- of georgiaho grew up ithat world and he was so angry at what he saw orhat was done to him in a segregated public school of the 1950's the late fifties if for example, heolde black

boys did not go to high school. say took a rickety bus passed the high-school that was for the white kids and they went to the school called the training school which he said that is four colored kids that train you to be useful it was rock bottom they were not learning astrophysics ande was passionate an angrynough about the expience that he became one of theounders of perhaps the mt milant of southern civil-rights movement of all an organization called

then beyond college kids do not understand what they stand for. they'll of dr. king but if he was to say that i have to walk faster because the young ople are getting ahead of me. >> host: really member of snick? >> guest: no. i have always been too stubborn to join any organization that has any fixed agenda th is why i ner rejoined us ds in the north. i just have a maverick nature. i don't know. but i support the goals of

snick and this other in leadership onference i did join theongress of racial equality. but they had a very simpl agenda that was total non violent civil disobedience very mucin the tradition of thoreau and gandhi and dr. king. thing is here is wha i believe. i believe brown vs. board of education, the warren court decision was right. segregated education, despite a few exceptions, is inherently unequal. it does do irreversible damag to thepits and the young

mentality of children. know from the very start that they have been set aside, they have been cordoned off or placed been some kind of sequestration wher they will not contaminate the edution of the privileged. i believe wholly apart on the fact that segregated schools have always been financially undeunded and grossly unequal and the file looking buildings usually with fast ovcrowding that is still true today in chicago, new york, los angeles, despite wholly it apart from the measurable influce. like the kids in the sth bronx that i know and a lot of get 10,000 less put into their education every year than

thos that live in the wealiest part. >> moneyoming from a government? >> guest: $10,000 less multiplied that times 30 children per css, that means essentially if you are born to a family like mine that could afford $21 million from you are guaranteed a $1 million education. if you were born into rock-bottom poverty neighborhood y get the rk bott educatiol. there is no chance rica have a al a meritocracy thehis is the last line to conclude to beespectful to the ller, wonderful people we merged from horribly segregated schools, that is true. but they were the rear exceptions.

overall separate and unequal schools have never worked they have never succeeded they basically brought about the cognitive -- cognizance and decapitation of an entire cast of people, who we're kept o the margins of society. it d not work in this century just passed andt wi not work inhis century ahead. that is what i keep coming back. i drive my friendsrazy, my white friends they hate me tg talk about it. but i still say, a segregated education is our nation's olst sin and greatest crime. and i am waiting for president obama to find the courage to

talk about. >> host: massachusetts? >> caller: mr. kozol it they kiefer thing you have done i reaa few of your early books. one comment and one question. schools that and testing the most important two weeks as school in my whole lif was a 11th grader had an english teacher who was wonderful he took us two weeks to teach us critical thinking and took a left-wing and right-wing newspaper and showed us how to tellhen somebody was trying to sell you something that helped me out more than anything else including college in my whole life. there is no way you can test fo that. did you read the august 31st

new yorkerrticle call of the rubber room about new yor public schools and i thought it was absolutely horrible. >> guest: i did not read it but i know the rubber room very well. >> host: diss told the story of the teachers who are sent to the rubber room because there were problems? they would be paid and they could remaiin thi place doing nhing four years. >> guest: to comek to the start of his question about criticalhinking critical thinking is day jargon term it is you so much and edution. but it really means the power

to interrogate reaty and asked interesting questions and to ask your own queions. and there really good suburban schools, i spent 1/4 of m time in the inner-city schools. but just to comparer remember what money rises over what sophisticated principles insist upon. and critical thinking is that the heart of the curriculum starng when the kids are in elementary school because they know they will need these skills when they get into the secondary years in order to ask penetting questions why did ffersodo this?

what was the strategic reason behind the siet nazi pt? by theoviets come a whatever the question, t disagree with each other but in discerning thus far away at the responsive, is the inner-city and these test driven elementa schools there is no ti for critical thinking. the way you do not get a better score for thinking critically, what about the child who is notice that all of the good stories he has read in school, think of something and the big leagues like fourth grade level of shakespeare that say when the

the rsue and piglet i think they are wonderful characters. i think the york is one of the great tragicigures out of all literature a donkey without a tail. he is sad. we always tell children that owls areery wise but t owl is dyslexic. he cant spend his name -- spell his name i think they're fasnating. if the chiren are not allod to read this, the joy

and magnate -- magicfhe book the epiphanies of winnie e pooh and his mysterious oddities like walking around the tree again and again and again because he thinks he is chasing an elephant and he keeps saying his own foot@ath and a thinks there are more. i love that. the stories of pooh and piglet in orr to pull out somethi like the topic sentence tt will be on the state exam. >> host: what out the point maybe that's where the parents should be working with the kids? >> guest: well, they ld be if -- unless they have bn the victims of exactly the same kinds of schools that i've described. >> host: uh-huh. >> guest: in which their

education basicall was truncated at a very early age. we can come back to that in a minute. that's a different issue. but i just wanted to say, critical thinking -- the child who wants to just raise the child wants to just raise s hand and say,hat is it, teacher, that makes this world of pooh and piglet and christopher robin, what mak it so magical, makes it seem so sweet and a place you would like to live, that you would ke to be a friend. that's an interesting question. u don't get point for that. that's a very little tiny kind of critical thinking. as a result, there's no time for that. that gets shoved out. the child who raises his hand and just says, teaer, -- they

never telou, guess what? always that, guess what? the teacher says, what? he says, i went t zoo and guess what?my qncle peavy. wonderful story about a baby be that he just saw, and then he asks queion, and the question might be a tough question, you know, an interesting question. there's no time for that in these inner city schools. the teacher has to cut him off. that's not going to help on the exam. as a result here is what is happening. some of these schoo, by simply drilling kids for tests all year, especially the whole two months before the exam, it's all test drill and it doesn't have to do with literature or anything. it's like filling in the

bubbles, you know? like how you eliminate certain ones. it's just test trickery. it's not education. some of these schools boast, after we have been doing this, our test scores went up. our fourth grade scos went up three percentage points, and the newspapers will jump on that and say, fourth-grade scores up three percentage points. but i meet the same kids four years later in eight grade, and they can't write a cogent sentence, and they can't read a complicateed subject matte text, but worst of wall, they can't participate in a serious class discussion onistory, on geography, on modern political affairs, or on classic greece, whatever, because they never

learned how to ask discerning questions. >> host: we have a caller who has been waiting a long time. let's get to this question and come right bac frank in philalphia. >> caller: oh, hi. great show. i like what mr. kozol. we have rubber rooms -- >> host: we'll get back t that. >> caller: how do you explain the 50% dropout rate in the school strict of philadelphia? that means that 50% plus of the graduates or students are not graduating and are up the creek. how do you elain that? do youelieve that discipline ays a role in our schools? >> guest: great question. i spent a lot of time visiting schools in philadelphia. yes, discipline is very

important. i'm not -- just because i gre up in the '60s or came of age in the '60 i'm n one of these dreamy pple who just id, let the kids do whatever they want, you kw. don't worry about dcipline. no. i can be as mean as william bennett. remember him? that's really saying something because he is awfully mean. i once had to debate him on "nigline." and he was so mean, ted koppel actually defded me. he felt sorry for m i felt like a kid who met t bully in the schoolyard, getting kicked in the teeth. but the dropout rate is a -- the black, hispanic dropout rate is

at a national catastrophe. it is something which would be considered a societal emergency in ani white suburban district. it's about 50% in all inner cities. the cities have ver clever ways of fudging the numbers s in some cities, chicagos one, for example, with all respect to the new education secretary, who supposedly worked a miracle in chicago. they pretend they have reduced e dropout rate. what they do in a lot of these cities, they create -- they play very clever numbers games to disguise -- i won't explain how they do it. >> he's saying they're saying it 5. >> gue: he is admitting it's 50% now

th's true. give him credit for that. i apologize, yes. i'm glad he is being candid. s 50% i all the major school @istricts. for black males, it's worse. in just two cities, just two cities, new york and chicago, and i mention them because together, new york and chicago, educate 10% of all the black men in america. it's those two cities. in those two cities, 65% of black boys -- because they're stillids to me -- who entered ninth grade -- 65% entering

black male ninth graders will never make it to the 12th 12th grade and graduate with their peers. and thoseho make it in six s or something, seldom graduate bause they're so demoralized. by then they're over 20. just think, when you look at those numbers, what a loss to our society. iean, lany tony morrissons, langstonughes, barack obamas will w never know because they were somehow intellectually decapitated? their spirit destroyed, sen, eight, nine yearsefore. my answer to t questio is

this. e solution ds not -- the solution will never be found in high school itsel because by then these kids are so far behind. yes, you can try through remedial efforts and anything thatorks i will support. m a practical person. but ultately this begins in the early years of school where these kids have received, first of all, no preschool, so they enter school two or three years behind the mainstrm. the little boys especially have learned no social skills, which the lovely pure fake onde-haired children of beverlyly hills learn social skil. they don't learn that.

they come into kindergarten rambunctious, discipline problems under the new regime. theyill fail their third-grade test no matter how good the teacher is, and will haveo repeat. they will repeat again probay in eighth grade, seventh grade. they don't have a chanc of surviving. they will probably give up -- typically they just -- the year fo dropout rates, it'sot like 12th gra. it's usually between ninth and tenth grade. and the thing is, if y come into secondary school and you can't read a book for content -- not just phonetically but i mean for content, real comehension.

if you don't have aove for reading books, for your own sa, which is almost impossible to imply under this test agenda -- because, you know, under ncrb, the only reason to read a book, it's not for the joy, it's for the number thas going to be plastered on your forehead after you read it. if you can't come into secd dear school with a fascination with numbers, for math for math's sake because it's teresting. remember when you first encountered algebra? what's that think where we do coordinates. maybe its trigonometry. >> that's trig. >> guest: i d plain geometry. if you don't come into secondary school with appetite for that

because it's interting, it's like a mystery to be solved. the only reason to learn this stuff is to pass the test. if you don't come intoecondary scho ith any of that and without the ability to write gracefully and sincerely, you don't have a hope in the world of taking enough pleasure in school to stick it out, especially when you know you're th or your fears behind. the average black sdentn america reads reads and computet the level of the typical seventh grade w student. did i say that too fast?

>>ost: 12th grade -- high school, basically -- >> guest: reads and putins at the level of a typical stengrade white pupil. >> 11 or 12 years old. >> guest: yep. so, no wonder the dropout rate is so high. that'shy i continue to believe that segregation is an unspeakable evil. it's never going to change as long as we can put them apart in separate schools where we don't send our own kids. >> we're taking a short break and we'll show the viewers where you live and how you write. >> guest: oh, myod, you'll see my messy house. >> host: we'll be right back. this is my wting hideout. this house was built in 1740,

and whenever people come up here who a a little more -- have more money than i do or a little more conventnal, they say -- the first remarks, you could really do somethingithhis house. but i have never donenything. it's a package. this is the glorious kitchen. this is allhere is. that's the kitch. i think this was once a woodshed that is fine for me. this was once the dining room, but it's been taken over by notes for one of the two books m working on now. this is all growing manuscripts, revisions of my last ten books,

or last eight books probably. it's not organized at all. you have to just sort of use your intuition to arrive at the right spot if you want to find the book you want. it's not alphabetic ornything. this is the only respeable room in my house. this is the living room. and i'm actually not in here all that muc because i'm usually working in the back room, which is my office. there's only six rooms in this little house. you will see the ceilings are very low because when it was built, people weren't as tall as they are now. and i got a -- what do you call

those things -- high definition -- >>ight. >> tv. so i could watch the red sox. that's one thing i do completely for fun, apart from jging in the woods, which i love to do is to flow the red sox. but the yankees have been destroying them lately so i have given up on them for a while so i retired the new tv. maybe not arch can recognize that face. that's langston hughes, and when i was in m first year o teaching in boston, in 1964-65, actually was fired at the end of the school year because i read one o his poems to my class. so he sent me that as my reward. that's my daddy when he was at

harvard medical school in 1930. over here is just a bar of music that my -- among educators, my closest friend, mr. rogers, fred rogers, sent me that when i was gloomy one week. did younow he was a musicn? a good musian as well as an ordained minister. sweetest friends childn have ever had. that'sn honorary degree that i treasure. it's from a school in the bronx where iave the commencent address at kindearten gradtion, and they gave me an honorary degree, and as you can

see, it says doctor of crayons. i'm very happy with that. i will still go back and immerse myself in books from the civil rights ear ramp -- era. to be honest, i spend a lot of time reading children's books. this is a wonderful one, a sixth grer gave me this book, a little girl in the bronx. the giver, it's very reminiscent of george orewell of 198 4. it's more subtle. it's a beautiful book. adultsike this book as much as childrel do. i just -- i lie down, literally

lie down sometimes, and just grab something at random off the tabl and -- you know, when i need sort of strong nourishment, that's not polical at allnd has nothing to do with all the injustices we face, i will just go through an anthology of poetry, and i mark everything i like. i particularly liked the aliz bethan period, and -- elizabethan period, and read john dunn for a while. shakespear ordan is my modern favorite.

street poets, to me they're li -- they're my soul food.

>> host: we're back with another hour and 45 minutes or so with nathan kozol. we're going next to kirk in new mexico. hi. >> caller: hello. mr. kozol,ig fan. i read your books in law school, and i want to ask you this question. i know you he a distaste for the conservative agenda and the no child left behind. my question is ts. how do you feel abo the liberals who should know better, who have turned their backs on

this issue ofducation, especially i the inner cities? and how do you feel about those who should have been working and who have an african-american president now who -- i mean, must know the problem because he is from chicago, and yet hasn't worked -- i think diligent enough to attack the issue becset'sot a political or governmt issue, it's a moral iss. >> host: thanks, caller. >> guest: well, you know, at the risk of making some of my close friends angry at me, this gentleman is perfectly right. an awful lot of people who are liberal or just think they're liberal, have pretty much avoided this issue, have not taed about it,n awful lot of the liberals i have known over the years have -- they have what

i call a sort of -- it's a special illness i would descri -- i'm not a psychiatrist so iave to use fancy terminology. i wod call it a kind of ideaolal promiscuity. i have seen this over the years. this year,s inner cit black children soe'll go in and mentor them and take them to s a few yankees ballgames orak them to the museum, you know, and next year it's redod tree and the year after that it's whales, and the year after that it's a political issue in singapore, and not at all these thingsren't importa, but

there is something that the danish philosopher called purity of heart is to willne thing. to start with sething, follow through with and it try to win some victories. i think that's a legitimate criticism of a lot of people on the left, and i didn't know if there -- >> hos , my followup would be, what do you want to say to the people on the left,nd you mentioned about president obama wanting him to do something. so, this is an opportunity for you to say, this is what i want. >> guest: well, i am stunned at the largeumber of people w

consider themsels devout liberals, who live in new york, los angeles, and liberals who live in the large city, inevitably, who do not merely refuse to accept and face and diuss the fact that they have abandonedhe black and latino kids in the public schools, that th have just locked them out of the agenda, they have -- i didn't word tha right. they have given them a separate agenda. put them in their own schools, apartheid schools i call them, and you go into a school -- a high schoo with 4,000 kids in the bronx, and you meet 12 white

children maybe at the most the whole day? 12 out of 4,000? you know, these are -- i have a lo of white friends in new york who consider themselves liberals, but they're really not. they're really what i would call -- i tell them like tired -liberals, a lot of them. "the new york times" recently -- a couple years ago tried to explain why their heas have rdened, why they don't fight for these iues anymore, and these former liberals are suffering from compassion fague. that's a wonderful term. sounds like a brish dease. compassi fatigue. these are people that are furious if i come to their home for dinner -- they still invite

me to dinner. i don't know why. always afraid i'm going to ruin the dinner party by saying something horrible. but -- i'm polite. i save it for dessert, over the coffee i say what i'm thinking. i say to them, instead of fleeing from these public schools, why don't you put your children io the schools, not intoit boutique mostly white charter schools in your neighborhood, or little elite schools you know how to g your kids into, but into the schools that the regular poor kids of new york attend, the ones that kids lik pineapple attended, and bring good schools to all the children in the city.

they get furious with me. they hate it. they're liberal about every other subject except this one, where it comes to their own children, and what they do is they get veryefenve and they will say to -- they haul out their credential from the '60s. they say, you remember me. i was with you. i was at all these marches, waington with dr. king in '64. i was in greensboro. i was theewn the crown of the civil rights liberals. i was onhe bridge in alabama. i always said, they're form liberals who were on that bridge really would, it would have

collapd. but i like the words of a black teher in harlem whe i told her how these peopl use their civil rise credentials from the '60s to avoid the sretion to which they're contributing today help says, you see, jonathan -- how did he word it -- to the very poor black and latino kids i teach today in harlem, it doesn't matter much what bridge you stood on 40 years ago. they want to know what bridge you stand on now? i lovehat statement. so, i just forced thi issue every chance get, and it makes people angry at me. hostly. make people furious at me. they just want to talk about some lite n trendy school reform, like small segreted and equal schools.

>> host: smaller schools? >> gue: yeah. still separate and up -- unequal. where bla kids are given lots of slogans to chant all day long. things likehat. ... pidxlele!jdxdñle!çhxdi#xlelelwlú i'm too old to bite my tongue. >> host: by th way, yesterday was your birthday, right? >> guest: it was, indeed. >> host: 73?

>> gue: yes, but i don't feel wiser. i don't feel more grown up today. >>ost: do you feel 73? >>uest: no. i fl like 60 maybe, i don't know. >> host: linda, meridian, mississippi, hello. >> caller: yes, hello, dr. kozol, it's an honor to speak you i'm close to yr age, grew up in alabama and received awo >> it was a sth grade teacher you actually got down her knees and showed us square iches and a the square yapd. i have that memory all my life. but i to became a teacher mostly took place before and

after the civil rights era prior left to have babies i came ack and lo and behold the school system had changed and i was iolved in civil rights having seen for myself at this inequitable situation in theery where i grew up. i became a teacher and nabs in a trible position i was not very good but the principle stood behind me then when the parent laughed he said don't ever do that i can. i was a very good teacher i taught 39 years. then then i taught gd which is also i opening the something i have noticed or the years, the principles became

less active in suppoing the teachers and became more active in supporting paren and the administrators above them. it sms the hierarchy of the administration, the goal of ing the administrator is to promote the status quo to make re everybody is covered. the teachers w squeak the loudest are shut down the hardestid you know, what i mean. in the approval-- , th principal was in charge of four during a toilet paper and to see who was absent. if you had a problem with a studt mmittee would give a note to that student and the parents had to call the teacheand between the twof them they settled their problems. w we have a whole school system won't run on no child left behind and other

programs. the teachers look like the last person ever considered. i am interested in your opinion. >> guest: a wonderful question. i will try to surprise you by giving you a brief answe than usua >> host: i am the protecto of the caller 51 i ramble. that is why i like little ks because their stors go on forever. they start and a pilot on. little kids are almost as good as theternal run on sentence as william faulkne almost. but first of all teachers are my heroes especially urban achers. those that go into the schools

that have the greatest challenges. they are at eir best that is what i wrote t book letters to a young teacher. they have been humiliated not only blaws like nclb which teach them by robots where they are told read this scipt which is a line and do not produce any our own humor or personlity or teaching ideas because we do not want that. i think teachers happen under attack even before nclb just ke william bentt w started to bdgeon teachers and it called the phrase a

tide of mediocrity but i think we're getting better teacher than half thank getting better people into the inner-city schools over the past 105920 years that i have seen any time i my career but the principals are terribly important and i happen to be verylose to school principals. do not like to feel that we scapegoat them for all of the evils of our socie. in my books i always urge teachers come even the most angry and impatient a these testing regulations come i urge them to try hard to defend the principle and talk to a principal. the really good pnciples

will prote those teachers. i do not mean protect their jobs butheir hearts and emotionally. francesca had a wonderful principal who iappen to like very much. sh looked dejecta the school she might call her at homend 9:30 p. just to comfort her. i also urge the young teachers noto aomatically write off the old timers. u see theseery bright the that just have come out of jail or dartmouth or wherever they sometimes make a mistake to turn up their nose at the veteraneachers t

often are afran-american or latino. that is a greatistake. yes, some of them may not be very interesting, but some, you will find some wonderful veter who kw that neighborhood and has no three generations of kids. often there is an older teacher there is one african american teaer that i described to just has this earned authoritx so she does not have to yell at the kids. if they get a little rambunctious. she's just told her arms and gives them the look just like grant money and everything calms down. itoh the young teachers, do not isolate yourself but make allies with fieer teachers the last thing you wl

say, it is it is hder for princles to pay attention to the teachers' state of mind an the kids t get every child by name is much harder to do tt and involve them a together with the parents we now expect them instead more and more the government were local districts say we do not want you to waste time with the ki are the teachs, we wha you to be the administrator of your building. they are forcing principles to be like a business and ceo. i came into a school in columbus, ohio i said earlier the principal? and do a better not, she did

not lie fat and she got up out of her chair and saidt well mr. kozol to be honest, i would rathe not think o myself as a principal. thought, wh else? she said i like to think i am the building ceo. i thought it is that why she studieohn dewey and aristotle and erik eriksonnd all of the great philosophers so she could pretend to be a half-day to business ceo? that is, there's a l of pressu under nclb to become coorate types i do not want

them to be corporate types i want them to be mothers to the children and big sisters to the teachers there is a great principle inew york who typifies m ideal principal who just retired probably because she hates to 17. >> host: michigan? >> caller: how were you? i just 125 n. -- follow-up lking about the inn city scs and the more older teachers that have been in the systemompared to the brighter new mines coming into the system and the inner-city

hools d school boards and the union te of teachers who do not necessarily doing a good job but they are in there because of a union and cannot be dona wave with four other brighter new-line someone to do a better job so if their stock and these inner-city kids to do not have a choice and they are stock there. it i a social injustic they cannot get ahead you talk about white people like it is such to stay like it is the white person's fault winner maybe urban areas are run by the liberal democratic system the mayor, city council, ey are all democrats and they have destred it. the children or people of

detroit have no way to get ahead because of the system. >> host: first let's go with thessue o the democrats being in charge and they are part of the problem? >> guest: look. we're all part ohe problem. i ve probably contributed prescribe benefitedrom these disadvantaged is. how come i walked into harvard? i did not have to apply anyghere else. they said you are coming year, are you? isn't that amazing? talk about affirmative action. my share in this in justice. >> host: what about her concerns of the teachers'

un? >> guest: i would not defend everything that every teachg union does, b the one that i have been to be close to or the national education association represents 3 million teachers in america, the largest teachers' ion in the country, has by and large tally apart from what they do on behalf of t teachers has been the bastion of progresve deccy throughout my career. they have been a ardent advocates for health care better housing for poor people for preschool for or children.

and without defending everytng they unions do, let's be blunt, or the democrats or the republicans. the teachers' uons are not the reason why we have catastrophic urban rates of a lawyer. among minority kids in ameca today because we have teachers unions back in the days when inner-city zero my white polish, irish, i thailand and jewish. >> host: do they have the same kind of powerhey do today? >> guest: yes. and in some ways re powerful. but this is the main point*. they make mistakes. there are areas where i

disagree, but the fact is the unions did not cate this catastrophe and they are now responsible for perpetuating it nor are the democrats or the republicans. it is a systematic and justice. a system that pass to be changed putting all the poorest children with the most poorly educated parents who are the victims of their prior generations of segregation and underfundingputting all of these kids in schools with the rest of society shuns although it is a leper colony is a guarantee you'llot only isolate physically but also cut them off intellectually from all of the benefits of surrounding society.

that is the big problem. the bigroblem is we, e united states, for all of the wonderful things that ge do, i love this country, still runs a theological the evi school system, a rock 10 evo and the way the rabbi would say it, it is evil becae still a model of apartheid wenherited that we saw in the sth inhe old days before dr. king in whi has largely been defeated in south africa to seven let me follow up with a question from email, how does america balance the need for an the educational benefits of integration without busing for

children from place to place? it was less successl becaus the burn was placed on the board to be bused away been after all of the white children went to private school how do we object to a fruitful integration? >> guesti will be very quick i hav written at length on this issue. i noticed the woman said basically more the man, how can we have integration without putting chiren on buse obviously long as we have residential segregation there's no way to do it unless you use transportation. right? there is absolutely no other wa if you live in an area, the bronx, that is a huge.

be the fifth largest city inld america. did you know, he? d virtually all minority, 90 percent black and hispan. howo do that without transportation? there's no way to do that without transportation. do not kid ourselves this will infuriate more pple. i a too o to worry. they cannot do me much harm now. i will keep sing this and i ll keep fighting th issue. listen, she raises the word busing. right? when i was an eighth grader seventh grade, my daddy g me into what was considered the top classical episcopal preps school and boston, it was a 40

minute drive every day. i am jewish by the way. so it was an integrated school. the third jewish and it was a good school. nobody said pour a little jonathan isn't that a horrible thing for a mr. kozol to do make him ride 40 minutes everq day to go the best private schools and boston? no. people were jealous. they wanted to know how they could get in the kid and. it was all bs. i was theno who.

they send their kids two wonderful prate schoolin riverdale which is the northernmo tip of new york of the city. it is a long ride especially during rush hour everyay. does anybody s oh my god? busing? you bust your children all the way to greenwich village? rich kids have been bused for centuries for decades t get into the top schools and their communities. in fact,, 90% of the children and ameritecgo to school by bus. where i live, my living in a working-class town of north of boston near thw hampshire border.

you try not to drive anywhere at 2:00 in the afternoon because it you do come on the back roads you get stuck behind the big yellow school bus which keeps stopping for all of the little ks. this is baloney. one example. there is a voluntary ingration program that sqrrounds the city of bton whe i live. it started after the protests khamenei and of the protests of the civil-rights. is 40 years old. 3,000 children ride the bus. that horrible tng. and they go typically not for an hour and a hal it is a 20 nute ride.

and 92 percent graduate from high sool with their classmates coming 88% 124 year college. the blacj parents, do they object to letting their kids ride the bus to the best schools were some of the best schools in america? there is a waiting list of 16,000 to get their children into the program that is one-third of all the black families in boston on the waiting list. i will dro thessue there. realize americans are so prejudice, they have been indoctrinated against the evils of busing for any good cause that they forget to how common this school buses as a

part o life iour society. little yellow sool bus, there is nothing wrong with it unless it contains black kids. >> host: texas? >> caller:i am from austin, texas. you are a bonto my spit. i hav taught in the public school and made it, am gng to cry. right now i and in a univsity. in the central texas area and i am getting preacher service teacher is ready. i started this sumr getting feedback from my students that

it started with president obama. >> guest: and did you say preschool teachers? >> caller: yes. i am hearing back from the whitpre-service teachers act are saying enough of this. we do not want this. present obama will be eaking to the public schools on tuesday. and in the schoo in central tes, many of the pents are up an arms. what i need from nano right now is reassuranca, my

goodness, i need reassurance to keep on going down the road the you have said and what you have been saying and writing about because i am hearing back from my white pre-service teachers they do not want this. have you heard of this before irked of this cropping up and other universities? >> host: when you say they do not want in this? >> guest: i did not mean to t so emotial. they're bringing in of other traditional, ethnic groups, bringing in langston hughes, a jazz, cook being traditional from different

backgrounds beside william nnett. guest: i get it. just to give the briefest answer that i can, i am moved when people cry in public because we have be trained you're not supposed to show your emotis. and if you're talking about something painf, and i think it is nma to do that. a 171 tours about are the ones that hen you talk about suffering in a playful way so they do not know tt it is real. i like people like this woman. we're all aware of the newspaper's with the protest

among some people who do not want the president to speak to the kids in their schools. hare is what i believe. i think they are more decent, en-minded, and the emotionally generous people in america than you would believe if you just ok at these isolated screwball groups that have a particula vicious ax to gri. that i do not want president obama to speak in eir school because they think he is a socialist or something lik that.

despite the frequent d viciousness of many of the people who attacd me from the right and it is no fun to undergo those attacks because i was not prepared for that with my education. the people who attack mere usuall better debaters that i am -- and then i am because they know how to narrow down their rds and use them like a surgical instruments. i am not good at that. despite that, i think this is basically a good country. i would call it a highly and complete but still perfectible as a democracy. i think most peoplthat they

meet, even with the conservative backed country areas like texas, when i visited a small university, i would get to talk to the guy at the 7-eleven store late at night when am desperately trying to find something to eat. . . whatever their pitics, when yo get them alone, you know, you get the sense that if they

knew pineapple, they would do anything they could for her. that if they knew david who's another wonderful boy in the bronx that i'm very pro of or anthony or joey or a whole bunch of them, they would do anything they could for them. the thang is we're so cut off thathey'll never meet them. but that's why i fight so hard against theitalhysical divisions that conceal these beautiful children from the rest of our society. ..

creative thinkers and here in florida our forme governor jeb bush was a big supporter of charter schnols. he also supported to giving vouchers to parents of public school children who failed the test, the irony is that the kids who failed the test in the public schools are not required to take the test in the private schools. >> guest: that's righ >> caller: a lot of people aren't aware before b bush beme governor of florida he was a real este developer and he actually helped to build very first private charter schooln the mimi-dade area but my queson is, what is your opinion of vouchers and charter schools in general because thomas jefferson founded the public school system so every

child would have an education. he would have turned over in his grave at the mass privatization of schools that are concerned with a profit margin more than the education of our childr. >> guest: the fcat that she refers to is the florida version of the nclb, their test. >> host: crter hools. >> guest: i believe vouche, cheaters -- i believe vouchers, whicheans the total privatizing of the school system market replacing the public scols ithe single worst most dangerous ecational idea to be brought to the national level as a serious proposition in my lifetime. it would mean the end of the

entire legacy handed down to us as this caller observes by jeferson, horace mann and so many others. for allts flaws, and i've criticized the public system my whole life in differentways for a its flaws, i think that it's -- the public school is a ecious legacy. it's the essence of the idea that we have a common destiny. as citizens of one democracy. and for all i imperfections, it does reprent a beautiful- something that's sacred to me. the voucher idea of individual

often corporate-run schools competing with one anoth on a market basis, it represents sort of the triumph of narrow invidual self-interest over anything that even hints at common virtues tt embrace other people's children. it's my kid first and gosh darn it, i'm going to use my elbows to get her into that school. and if the mother across e street doesn't have the sharp elbows to know how to do it or if she's depressed or too crushed by perty tknow how to do it, toh luck. let her vlose. 's a win/lose -- it's not a --

to me, it appeals to th worst instincts in human beings. you know, government can't make us all into st. francis of assissi. it can't make us all into saints but the government can either># bring out the meanest instincts our society. and i think vouchers bring out the most evil -- charter schools are a halfway step to vouchers. they were invented largely in order to placate people who want vouchers. >> host: so you're against charter schools. guest: well, we'llall them public schools but they'll be run privately and i don't have starts a charter school, they

farm it out to a private corporation to run it r profit. some charter schools -- a few that i've seen are very good. and i'm not afraid to admit that, you know. but for the most part charter schools tend to be mediocre. they open and shut they have no -- they'll enrol kids and then they'll go bankrupt. a t of them are a little me than mom and pop shops, basically. they won't admid this, but they -- tho that do get high scores and get the newspaper tention, tend to be schools that are cleverly selective in the students they enroll. they won't admit -- they won't say we're excluding all the kids who might cause us problems but

by self-selectivity of who hears these schools and knows how to navigate the application program, they tend to be highly selective. most don't serve kids with special needs so what happens is, a handful of these charter schools look very goodnd get super good attention in newspapers and the meantime all the kids who they won't accept, whose parents don't have the aggressive savvy tof#m fight tot into t k all of tho kids are left to the teachers in the public system. and i'm proud of the -- i'm proud of the parents who sta in the public system andry to make it a tter system. instead of the ones who flee to what are basically boutique academies. >> host: name is charter school

that you'v been to that you thought was top-notch. >> guest: i won'tay top-notch, but i'd give -- i'd give at least a b minus -- i visited one of the kipp acamies -- it's called kipp. it's in e bronx. it was the second kipp academy. and it had a bunch of whiz kid, young teachers who, you know, hadon to cols le le. i guess, you know, yale n't that bad, is i i always say yale is for the -- is for t -- it's for bright kids who are staxly impaired. they tend -- but, you kw, they had these whiz kids who might stay in it for five years and might quit in one ye.

and th put on a show, basically, while i was there. they did lots of hand-clapping and self-hope slogans. while i was the, you know, it was like being at the circus du soleil. it may be a goodgéy school for l i know. i noticed all the kids had brd-new rely beautiful backpacks, the kind that come from nice shops. i'd never seen so manyids who had new prescription glasses so, you know, they said -- they say they're not selective and the kids are no richer than anybo else in the bronx, but there are distctionsmong the poor. there are the more fortunate poor and there are the poor who never get near places like that

anthe main point is the charter schools are a distraction. they're never going to serve more than a frtion of the kids in ameca. d the great struggle haso be for the -- has to be for the mainstream of thchildren. who are in the regular u.s. public schools. that fly that flag even if they dishonor it in many ways.>u >> host: ware going to be with jon@than kozol til the top of the hour. he's the author of over a dozen books including a 19,he winner of the national book award and wll be back with more of your questions in just a few minutes. >> this is where you do your writing? >> yeah, i almost never let yone in this room so i'm

giving you a special -- i guess, a special exemption. this is where i've written all books for aut 25 years. 22 years, i guess. i write byhand. i' always written by hand on these pads. if it's not this kind of pen, this kind of pad i just can't do it. and i don't use a computer. i don't like to write with a computer. i don't like anything mechanical getting in between me and the words. i know thisr6í jus looks crazy. it's probably bes if you don't film the wall in front of me simply because -- or not too close up because it's got the phone numbers of everybody like i've ever had to call.

on the phone maybe in e past 10 years1sl or something. i come in here and i alvays drk cnffee. i drink much too much coffee. it too me years to figure out you could buy a little gadget on't answer the phone. i nernswer the phone while m working.bw i don't have email at home here. my -- i have a couple of wonderful assistants who run an office for me in cambridge and they do that. there's a fax machine and it's upstai in a little hidden place. i n't look at th for at least the first seven hours after i wake up. i always like to start by

actually writing s if there's preparation for resrch that i need to do for that day's writing, i do it that night before. in other words, after a d of writing, i will pull together all the notes that i need for the next day's writingíuq&ñ when i start -- and there's coffee and a certain mood, silence, it's so peaceful here, you know, and i'll just go straight to work. i tend to ve this problem that when i -- see, when i write, sometimes i don't leave enough margin space. i go toolose to the margin. like here's#3 an exple.

so then -- aer two urs, three hours, i'll re-read what i've been doing, and i say, oh, no, you needo add a little -- the beautiful words that child told you, you forgot. so then i have to do all this.p i'll have like a little line that will say, 2a, and then sometimes on a single page there will be a whole bunch of those and fortunately i have a saint friend, and she has -- and she cares a lot abo these issues, theseocial issu, the moral issues so she, god bless3p her,

types erything i do. i don't send anything the night i write it becse -- i rewrite everything a zillion times and mayben three weeks i'll send her 60 pagesf this gibberish and she turns it into typeqds script thatmfo people can read adse me and it usually takes me about three to five years to >> when she's done that 60 pages

section of the book is set in place. then later, of course, there's fact-checking and the research. all tse bottom shelves down there behind me is all the data from my last two books. >> well, thank you for allowing us into your office in your house. >> thanks for coming. nobody else will get in here for another five years till these two books are finished. ♪

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♪ >> jonathan kmzol, we're back for our last 40 minutes. looking at some names here that i wrote down from one of your books, ebony willia. >> guest: yes. bernardo rodriguez. >> guest: yes. >> host: danny santiago.

>> guest: yeah. >> host: otis lamont blair and i pulled those names because of this email that came in. i'm a doctoral student presently doing research in ami quite recently i lost my first student due to an ak-47 gun accident. do you think that direct instrucion in gun awareness and behavioral social curculum as a critical core component of motivation programs will transform traditional methods of maintaining student conduct? >> guest: wow! >> host: wow! >>uest: there's a lot o b words. >> host: yes, but your kids -- the names i gave were kid who had died in violence. >> guest: well, bernardo actually was -- he died at the nds of the violence of n york city. the city failed to enforce

housing laws in his building. >> host: uh-huh. >> guest: and consequently he was simply playing on the eighth floor of his apartnt buildin and the elevator was broken and they complained and the city did nothing about it and he touched the elevator door and it opened and he fel eight flights to his death. there was no elevator there. it was broken, youknow. so most of the kids i've kno who have died young have not ed in violce, in crime inflted on themut a the indirect result of the tremendous -- t chronic deprsion iwhich they were --

they were themselves placed by the conditions of their early childhood. a lot of them -- you see, i've been working in the- with kids in the bronx for 25 years. it started when i wrote "rachel and her children." a homeles shelter was i manhattan but most of those kids, when they finally got out of that horrible shelter, the city -- a lot of their parents wanted to live in mixed -- raallq mixed neighborhoods but the city forced them all to move to the bronx, put them in section 8 housing in the bronx in a neighborhd that was already deeply drug-addicted. the years those kids spent in the shelters, and these shelters were not anything bevolent. i mean, the shelt i descred in "rachel and her children," you know, had 1600 kids and

parents in an -story decrepit old hotel where the guards sd crack cocaine. i mean, it was a nightmare. several of those kids were so traumatized by that expience that they never recovered from it. one of them shot himself inhe head three yrs ago. another just died of unknown causes two months ago. perhaps drugs. so look, i'd like to see any type of intervention that can spare kids from any kind of violence, even self-inflicted violence, but i don't think that's the main issue that we're fang. if they went to -- if they went

to wonderful schools, if they had joy in their childhood -- i brought this with me to give to you as a prent. >> host: let them show it to our ewers. >> guest: julia's child of the world. >> host: this is your favorite children'sbook? >> guest: one of them. i'd say my favorite is "good night moon" by eric carle and this is a wonderful book, too. if they grew up in a world -- in fransa's classroom where they were happy -- those kids were ppy for their entire first grad year where they came to respect themselves. and they loved beauty and they learned that it's okay to be joyful in school. that that's not bad. you know, if they had years of that, this -- they wouldn't -- they wouldn't be turning to

bitterness and violence when they're 18 years old or 16 years old. >> host: let's go to gle, idaho next. hello. >> caller: hello. good afteoon. >> host: hi. >> caller: there was some earlier discussion about the 50% dropout rate in inner cy high schools. but, of course, that means that 50% of thetudents are graduating. whic in some respects is a much greater accomplishment than graduati from a well-funded suburban high school. and i guess my question is, what are -- what are our universities such as your alma mater a other universities, particularly, private universities -- wt efforts do they undertake o identify and recruit students that actually succeed in graduating fromhese inner city high schools, my o whom may never take a colle

preparatory test or even consider applying for a university becau of the environment that they're in? anthen my other point, one other point -- i heard your comments earer regarding the voucher programs. and my observation there is that, you kn, many politicians who choose to send their own children to private schools seem be very opposed and qck to dismissoucher programs that in effect enable the children of poorer families to provide the same opportunity to their children. >> host: thank you, caller. >> guest: well, on second in we n get done with that one quickly. the point is, a lot of those who promote vouchers -- do you remember a man named lamar

alexander who was education secretary under maybe bush senior or reagan. i can't remember which. i was once in a debate with him right on a senate hearing beuse i remember tom hain, senator harkin was chairing the committee and we were the two witnesses, and he said to me, 'cause he was a voucher advocate, alexander was, and he said, jonathan, essentially, he said, you know, 'cause he was a very polite gentlanly man. he said nathan, you know, we send our kids to the top schools, top prep schools. all we want to do through vouchers is give these poor kids the same chance. and i said to him,ecretary alexander, if you are proposing that we give $40,000 vouchers to all the kids in inner city washington, chicago, and new york so they can go to exeter

and other top schools in america. ,ñvt3ñuñ of andover. i went to one. >> host: which one. >> guest: i went to a school in noble and green which is boston's local version of anver, exeter. and, you know, what class size

is at andover? 12. 12 in a class. so wheyou pay $44,000 a year for your child, you're getting not onl relaxed teachers but small classroom and george bush, jr. or george w. could do well enough to get into college and it gets a lot of attention. y know what the kids i know in the ier city have by way of class size? often in september there'll 38 kids packed in a classroom that holds 24.

i walked into school in los angeles, a teacher t 40 kids in her class. 40. i sa to her right in front of the kids, i hope it's okay to say ts bad word on television. i said how in hell do you teach 40 kids? i said it right in front of the children 'cause that was not the worst, nastiest word they'd ever heard. and i always say don't ever ask that question 'cause she said, here, find out and she left the room. made me teach them. but that's why the whole voucher thing is a frd. >> host: toledo, ohio, go ahead. >> caller: hi. i'm a middle school teacher here in the neighborhood and it's the name neighborhogd whe i graduated from higschool. the high school i graduated from was 98% black and i worked in class as is the school i teach in now.

and i want to say -- they're very, very brightkids. they're like sponges and they absorb knowledge but they're very good readerslso and they deserve the very, very st. and my heartaches for them because they're not going t get it and i do the very, very best i can as d my colleagues i emphasize to give them a really good first class education. that being said, the other two-thirds of my students are kids who struggle with reading. they don't read well. they don't like rdading. and i can do some things to get them listening comprehension-wise to know some of the joys of literature but when they don't have e basic skills, it's very difficult. now, this does not mean they're dumb kids. they are not. they're bright kids and they're survivors in a very difficult enronment sometis. but my point is, there's such pressure on us to me them ahead. get them to pass the test and there are tricks of the trade that we use to get them to pass

theest but we know in our hearts that they aren't really getting that lovehat learning and it's oy going to come wn we can slo down, we can identify them properly, assess them properly and have the time we need in middle school, i'm emphasizing because if we don't it in middle school and this is my point, we're going to lose them and we're going to contribute to the overwhelming dropout rate. e achievement rate between latino and african-american kids is a national disgrace. i'm a big fan of yours, mr. kozol, i just -- i want to emphasize there are things we can do right now to stop this. and with the situation it is now, all the things you're saying about busing and equality of opportunity, education wise is right. liberals have abdicated their responsibility. i totally agree with everything you said politically but we are in the trenes. we teachers, i don't mean just myself. i'm speaking, i hope, for a lot

of my colleagues and we're kind of desperate people at this point and i realhy related to the earlier caller that burst into tear this is how we feel. we're sacrificing our own children. we should think of it that way. >> host: caller, can i just ask you, if you could get one thing from either the government,our community, whatever, what would you -- what would be the most valuable thing for you. >> caller: intensive training r identifying teachers that want to be where they are, things that work and there are those things, research-based strategies -- give us the time and the training that we need. it cost money and it means we have to do extra time but we need it. and we need special training because these are intensive problems. ey can be solved but we have to have the time and the money behind it to do it. >> host: thank u, toledo, idaho. >> guest: if i would list five things, maybe four that would --

that would directly address the crisis she described, i would agree with her. you've got to start at least by middle school. i would start sooner than that. i would list t following things. i would say, number one, we should stop pretending as every prident has done for the past four decades that whe he's elected or she's elected we're going to give preschool to all the kids who need it. that's a terrible broken promise. it's time to do it. give wonderful pre-k to every one of these needy kids. evey single one othem and not just half a day for one year. but three or four years. host: number two. >> guest: number two, small class size. a teacher who's good, pretty good with 28 or 38 can work miracles with 18. and, you know, if it's good for

the ildren of the rich in andover, then it's good for the poorest child of the poorest mother in south central l. >> host: number three. >> guest: number three the heart of any school is the quality and high morale of e tdacher. and that means giving n just superb training but more important, continuing emoonal support to the creative, not totally conformist jubilant high-spirited, exciting young teachers who adore the children, who lov the children, and who are crawling the wall out of -- out of desperation because of e pathological reliance on

drilling them for exams all day long. >> host: four? >> guest: and four, i would flood thelassrooms with hundreds and hundreds of the most expensive, beautiful brightly colored fascinating, charming whimsical, delightful children's books. just flood the room -- get rid of those pit pat phonic readers, they're so boring. i swear they do a better job of putting children to sleep. they create a sleepiness in the first grade. the walking dead who are just good at chanting vowel sounds all day along. teach the vowels and consonants out of wonderful books and they create a mood where learning is a thrill. where it's excitin to walk into school at 8:00 am every morning

where you look forward to it. you nt to get to that bin over there in the corner of the room where the teacher has stacked hundreds and hundreds of book. i don't an have a good school library. i mean, flood the class itself with books. >> host: what next for you? what are you writg? >> guest: i'm working on -- i've never done this before. i'm working on 2 1/2 books at the same time. i say 2 1/2 'cause one of them is a children's book. so that only counts for half. i tell stories to children a lot and they say, why don't you turn that into a book. and i say well, i haven't shown to my publisher and they say, do it. you know how little kids are. they're good at bossi me. they say do it. the two serious books i've been working hard on ar number e,

a book on5 years of life and work with the children that i've known and written abo in the bronx. >> host: a memoir basically. >> guest: a little more than that. it's like an update, what happened to them since. >> host: uh-huh. >> guest: where are they now? >> host: uh-huh. >> guest: and what's the current education picture look like for their younger brothers and sisters. where doe stand now for the next generation. and i've been working on that for several years. it will be one of the major books of my career, i hope. but i've got a lot of work ahead that's going to take time. the other book is a memoir of my daddy, my father, which is complete. it's virtually complete. i finished it. he died last year at the age of

102. he had been an -- he had a fascinating life. he started out going to harrd law school. he quit harvard law and went off to eu, tracked down the greatest living founders of modern psychiatry, you know, people who were still alive in switzerland and vienna and paris. came back, went back to college and did all the premed courses in two semesters and entered harvard med school. spent the next 12 years, you know, as a resident at mass general. th's in boston and hopkins and baltimore and then became one of the -- you know, really finest clinicians i've ever known. he was trained equally in neurology and psychiatry so he had a very skill in delineating

the difference between purely psychiatric problems and physical, neurological problems. kind of the culmination of his career aa doctor was when -- eugene o'neal moved up to boston to be m father's patient and daddy treatedim for the remainder of his life, lived acro the street from daddy's office and daddy saw him every single day till he died. buried him. told me he couldn't sign the death certificate becse he didn't want to let him go. daddyoved him, you know. he came to love him. my father loved literatu, you know, so he loved o'neal. and then at the age of 88, he diagnosed himself with

alzheimer's. and spent the next 14 years -- he lived 14 more years during which he described to me the progression of his illness. it's an absolutely fascinating story. that book is all done. but my publier -- it's random house, well, crown, it's part of random house, the -hey think the other book is more timely so they want the other book to come first. even though that's going to take a lot more work, and i kind of like the book on my daddy to come out now. but they want to hold it on ice for four years so i love them. i mean, my publishe is a close friend of mine. and she's been very good to me. you know, sometimes i think that marketingoncerns and corporate

demands are sort of -- sort of taken ove the publishing industry and an author's lofging and his love for his daddy doesn't seem to count that much. i hope i'm sticking a little pin in her rear end so she will pay attention to what s's saying. i kind of would like to publish that book now. >> host: this email from katherine from cleveland heights, ohio, actually kind of goes back to your other book. she asked the question -- she says, steven from "death at an early age" has haunted her ever since she read the book. do you know what became of him. was he rescued like pineapple? >> guest: no. he like many of the kids that i knew at that time, never recovered from what we went through in that school. he ended up in prison after committing a truly atrocious crime. my father actually, god bless

him, as a psychirist, tried to pñsñ@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@e lood up to have died recently, you know, past away. my closest friend among educators was fred rogers, mr. rogers. i miss him terribly. i still keep his unlisted phone number in front of me with that

sort of childish thought maybe some night i could get him on the phone and now, you know, my mom died t years agot 102 and then my dad last year. so, you know, i just think when i talk to college kids, i always say, list, you won't believe it at your age but lifgoes so fast. use it well. i used to say it to them every time. it goes fast. use it well. >> host: another name tt comes from your books is james g. mcdonald. who's he? >> guest: a classmate in high school who suffered from deep

depression, you know, in his junior year. he w a kind friend to me. i liked him very mu. you know, as i said was almost the only jewishoy in my school. at that time. and when one of th other -- one of the boys who wasn't very nice -- i won't say his name. one boy said something to me and said -- and called me a dirty jew, my friend james just swung his book bag -- you know, those green book bags, just swung his green book bag around and around and around and whopped h in

the face and i don't like violence but, good, he will never say that again. i was haunted after jim died. life is agile, rich or poor, yoknow, white or black. life is fragil we never -- you know,e're always startled. i was startled when fre rogers, who to me seeme like an eternally young man, you know, and he's cling -- he called me up to ask me how my mom was doing. he didn't tell mee had cancer. that he was dying, you know? i was stunned when he died. i thought he'd live forever. you know, i wanted him to live forever. but i knew, you know, none of us can. that's why i always say to people, especially, young people when you have very high ideals

and people say, patient, you know, first get your business deee under your belt, your law degree so you can work your way up in the corporation and, you know, ler -- later you can deal with your ideals. i say, don't believe that. you know, don't wait too long. your ideals might creep away. they might dispear. what matters most to your sense of ethics right now iso do it for you. >> host: we need to take a pho call from greensboro, north carolina. lizzy, hi. >> caller: hi. i agree most with what most jonathan has said but i do take exception toome things. he was talking about voluntary busing. and when he was going to school,

an that's different from what we're dealing with now. i bet his parents didn't have to worry about who was going to take car of him while --ou know, they went to work early especially a single parent. went to work early and had to make sure their kids were okay. and then they had to go on this long bus ride to school passing schools in their own neighborhoods. i think it's the community where we need to start. you mentioned communities deprsed by poverty and that's what's so prevalent in our minority communities and we should start there for the solution. >> guest: all i'll say is this, look, i'm practical and i wouldn't spend so much time with teachers andrincipals as i'm doing right now again in the

south bronx unless i wante and believed that we could make some real proess here and now with the situation that whave. in fact, i have a little sign over my desk wch says,ick battles bi enough to matter, small enough to win. and so in that sense i do believe, you know, we've got to do the best we can in the situation we've got. at the same time i will never renounce my belief, which i got from taking dr. king very seriously, and, you know, i still rememb his eam. he didn't say i have a dream that some day we'll have separate and unequal schools with higher test scores and lots of bombastic chance about self-help and self-improvement. he said i have a dream that some day little black children and

little white children will sit together at the table of brotherhood. and i'm going to keep fighting for thad goal to my dying day. >> hos has the obama administration approached you at all for advice or have you proposed any projects for them? >> guest: i've spoken -- it was his chief counsel during the campaign. >> host: uh-huh. >> guest: and i naturally worked for his campaign. but i spent more time with senator kennedy, wit ted keedy, since he was t chair of the education committee and grew very fond ofhim. we had thr lon meetings up until almost the time when he was diagnosed with cerebral -- with a tumor. and i'm going to bontinue that

struggle. i'mtill waiting for my invitation to have dinner with the president and his wife. i'd like -- i'm waiting but they must have lost my address or something. >> host: las vegas, go ahead. . >> caller: hello >> host: you're on the air. >> caller: yes. i'm glad i g on. i want to say that it's amazing about the woman who called who talk about the getting the community inlved was right on the same page with me. i want to say how much and i'm so grateful for the life of jonathan kozol. i can remember back in the '40s when my mother was a community activist in new york ghen busin first gan aftep de facto segregation was abolished under

the leadership so i'm a child of that era. i was in elementary sool when they wanted to tear the school wn and -- but -- to bus children out to the suburban schools. d my mother said your local school is your power base and demand where goodsndervices be delivered. and now i'm a great grandmother and i have two -- an 8 and 9-year-old goi to school in brooklyn which w my home before we moved to las vegas in the public school systems there and i see they are being served well to a degree. and the thing that i wanted to ask is if jonathan is familiar with programs that involve community and parents like the algebra project. >> guest: yes. >> calle which is run by bob

moses. and i was a volunteer bk in the early '90s in district 13 in brooklyn and saw two classes of hundreds of kids gduated from the algebra project. my volunteer work -- i didn't really have any children in school but i've always insisted that people have a vested interest in what goes onn their local school where their taxes go >> host: i'm afraid we'll have to get it going -- we're gting a little close ontime. you want to respond to he >> guest: well, the algebra project is amazing. bob moses is, of course, a legendary figure in american history. i'll just -- you know, say bluntly that every school superintendent i've known, and i must have known well, pretty wellhat , 40 by now -- i know them when they're hed and

"the washingtopost" or "new york times" says the new perintendent has new wonderful ideas on how to turn it all around. they always have seven. there's a 7-point plan to turn it all around. i don't know. they love the word "seven." they love the word seven. anhe gethis honeymoon for a few years. everything is upbeat and scores are up and then he's fired 'cause it didn't work 'cause he didn't pull off this miracle of making triumphantly successful segregated and unequal schools. and then he ends up a ew years later, i find he's hired in seattle or st. los. i meet him there or her there. you know, every -- these are decent people. i mean, mostly, the superintendents i've known. it's a horrible job. i don't know who would want to be the school superintendent in

a city like new york or washington. i always think that thatob was created so that one person could die for our nation's sins. 'cause, know, he takes such a beating or she. they get psychologically broken down. look, they all have a plan. for making separate and unequal schools terrific, successful, happy, and high-scoring. and it's never worked yet in the years since plessy versus ferguson. that was 1896. you can always find exceptions. every city has a handful of exceptns that they show to reporters and they say for oprah winfrey but basically those dropout numbers speak for themselves. they tell us that the warren court was right.

>> hos last call is from white hope, pennsylvania. mark, go ahead. >> caller: hello. mr. kozol, my name is mark. how are you doing? >> guest: hi mark. >> caller: i have my father here with me. i'm watching. say hello. >> guest: hi. >> caller: i heard your parents were ptty old there. i guess i had a bunchf things to say- my mother is going to through the giant and going shopping --. >> host: caller, w only have a couple minutes so we're going to have to make it really quick. >> caller: to do all this stuff and i like to speak to you in depth for about 24 hours every day for the next 20 years but anyway, what's your motivation behind what you do? >> guest: well, y c reach me by the way -- can i tell -- it's just my name at gmail.com. host: your full nineteen jonathan kozol, one word at gma

gmail.com. >> guest: that's right. what keeps me going basically i think was the point of his question is that the joy i get with being with kids, you know, even in the most discouraging circumstances, even the most dismal setting, even whe i know the odds that lie ahead aren't good, you know, when i know that the dropout numbers still, i get a sense of joy and hope out of being with children. especially, with the little ones. i have the strength and health, i have this fantasy of going back and teaching little ones again. i'd like to teach first grade or second ade. and i always feel happy when i'm with the children and they surprise me eternally by the things they say and things they think arfunny.